Charlie Blackmon: "I'm the tiredest guy in baseball"

 

DENVER – Following a Rockies win the clubhouse will blare music of the winning pitcher’s choosing, some of the players’ kids will toss around a waffle ball and the day’s stars are more than willing to chat it up with anyone that will lend an ear, be it teammate or media.

One guy who is always essential to every Colorado win—being the National League’s second most accumulating WAR outfielder behind Bryce Harper since the start of 2016—is Charlie Blackmon. Following wins, Blackmon is nowhere to be found.

What is after each and every game ‘Chuck’ gets in a vigorous and lengthy workout, Alex? That’s the Jeopardy answer to the question, ‘why have I never seen Charlie on the ROOT Sports postgame?’ And ‘where is Charlie after games?’

The more we learn about two things the more we find out how good Blackmon is at his craft. Those two things, one, the constant study of success in the centuries old game of baseball and two, how is a human being—specifically one tasked with performing athletically—effected by altitude.

Let’s start with altitude, as do most things with the Rockies. In the past few days, two of my personal favorite national baseball writers published stories on Coors Field. Neil Paine with FiveThirtyEight wrote a story titled, Why Can’t The Rockies Hit Outside The Rockies? And Eno Sarris of Fangraphs wrote a story titled, That Other Thing That’s Tough About Playing in Denver. In Paine’s piece, he discussed the Coors Field hangover—which the Rockies are currently OPS’ing .840 at home and .671 on the road this season—and how it doesn’t seem to be letting up. Even more concerning regarding the hangover, there really isn’t a clear cause despite the many theories. It definitely exists, just nobody has found evidence of the cause. In Sarris’ separate story he hits on a really interesting note, the Rockies pitchers are actually ever so slightly advantaged out on the road, possibly by having more oxygen to work with due to the players’ normal high altitude environment. He talked to several Rockies and what he found, which was his storyline and which is way more important is that the club is struggling with their sleep cycles when coming back from road trips and furthermore having trouble recovering in their normal home environment. Players are more consciously worrying about sleep, hydration and their appetites than they would if they played for another team and their is small proof it is having a negative effect on the Rockies.

There are two really important comments on the Fangraphs article.

Part of the implications of this research is that the aerobic fitness element could actually be attributing to the run scoring environment (i.e. Rockies pitchers are better equipped, physically, to perform well on the road, which would violate some of the assumptions in park factor calculations).

This brings up an interesting point related to the Coors Hangover. Not only is hitting on the road more difficult for Rockies hitters, apparently pitching on the road is actually easier for Rockies pitchers! This would further deflate the Rockies road scoring environment, which inflates the Rockies park factors even more… The further we get into this, it seems like Coors is less of an extreme offensive park and more of a park that does extreme things to the poor souls that play for the Rockies.

It seems like the park factors are being called into question with the Rockies for the one zillionth time. This was best done by our friends over at Purple Row who did this terrific, debate-changing story in 2014 about the discrepancies being shown in advanced meters.

Now where does this leave us with Blackmon, who is unarguably valued higher by the Rockies than he would be by any other team in baseball, underrated at that and an All-Star.

“I’m the tiredest guy in baseball,” Blackmon joked recently. “I have to spend more time taking care of my body then the next guy or maybe that’s just me.”

Blackmon has played in 94 percent of Rockies games since the start of 2014 when his career really took off. This mark of playing in 485 of the Rockies’ 517 games in that period is even more impressive when you consider all the pain (injuries) and suffering (frustration) that comes with playing primarily at a Mile High. Meanwhile, this makes Nolan Arenado even more impressive—because it’s not a Rockies story without talking about his machine like performance—playing in an ironman like number of games while keeping a steady average.

But back to Blackmon.

“It usually takes me a long time to unwind,” he said. “But once I get to sleep I make sure to get nine hours of sleep, especially here. I don’t do much away from the park and I spend a lot of time here. When I’m home I just relax.”

Once again, it’s a conscious effort he has to make to do something as simple as sleep. He isn’t one to complain, in fact, he’s not at all. He isn’t making an excuse, what he does say though if you read between the lines is that there is a difference playing in Denver and he treats his body differently for that.

“I take pride in how I play baseball and what I do to become a baseball player every day. I try hard at it,” the 30-year-old said. “I can’t workout before the game because I’ll run out of energy. When you don’t keep your strength up that’s 162 games can get to you, that’s where you can become a risk for injury.”

Blackmon’s incredible work ethic is what keeps him on the field when the field itself is not in his favor for his continued play.

Remember when it was said Blackmon was the second most amassing WAR NL outfielder over the past 14 months?

It should probably be higher.

WAR uses advanced defensive metrics to determine a player’s full value. He has a negative -9.0 dWAR in this period.

In the history of the Rockies, only one player who has appeared in center field for more than 120 games has a positive dWAR, that’s Juan Pierre. There are 13 players that meet this criterion, isn’t it somewhat odd that the Rockies have only had one above replacement level defensive center fielder in the course of their 24 years? While it’s entirely possible only one of the 13 has been better than someone regularly available at Triple-A, I find that extremely hard to believe.

With the largest outfield in baseball combined with the altitude, some have suggested throwing out any defensive metrics for Rockies outfielders.

Blackmon is not terrific with the glove, but he is nowhere near bad.

He makes all the catches he should make, makes a few four-star grabs and he has a decent arm. He should not be discounted to the level that he is for his defensive play.

Then there’s his offense. Right now he has almost a 900 point difference in his home and road splits for OPS, yet last year the difference was only 13 points in that encompassing offensive stat. Signs that he has reached maturation as a hitter and hasn’t let the Coors Field hangover effect him nor the Coors Field highs. Yet you still have to count for it and consider that Blackmon was roughly as good on the road in 2016 with that noted hangover as he was at home with the advantage.

The left-handed speedy and slugging centerfielder is invaluable as the Rockies leadoff hitter. He’s by far and away the best dual threat atop a lineup in baseball. His ability to sock a ball and steal a bag, coupled with the amount of times he gets to the plate makes him impervious to opposing clubs.

Blackmon is a really interesting case study for Coors Field because as he said, “I’d like to think I’m getting a little bit better every year.” And that improvement keeps exposing him as one of the game’s best despite battling stats discounting him and an environment which makes his job more difficult.